South corp to hand over parks to RWAs soon

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation is all set to hand over management and upkeep of most of its parks to residents. According to commissioner Manish Gupta, instructions have been given to the four zones to hand over 20 parks per month to the local resident welfare associations or interested NGOs or market associations.

“We have two kinds of systems operating in the civic body’s jurisdiction - public-private partnership model where residents are looking after the parks in their localities and the corporation maintained one, where the corporation is putting in money and also paying for gardeners for the upkeep of the parks. Among these two systems, we have experienced that the PPP model is working much better,” Gupta told Hindustan Times, adding that this handing over of parks to residents was started on June 15, 2009.

Out of the 6,400 parks under the civic body’s jurisdiction, 617 are already maintained by the respective RWAs. Earlier in April, Hindustan Times had showcased contrasting pictures of a corporation-maintained park and the one groomed by an RWA in neighbouring South Delhi localities.

“Earlier, we used to pay the RWAs Rs 6,000 per acre for gardeners, which has been increased to Rs 8,000.

We want more RWAs, NGOs and market associations to come up and take ownership.

This will definitely ensure better monitoring and management of these green spaces under the corporation’s jurisdiction,” Gupta said.

The RWAs, market associations and NGOs can follow a simple procedure and get ownership of their nearby parks.

A standard memorandum of agreement (MOA), which is available on the corporation website as well as with the deputy director, horticulture, needs to be filled and submitted.

This will then be signed and the park handed over. “Every six months, we reimburse the RWAs the acre-wise wage for gardeners,” the commissioner said.

Rajiv Kakria, RWA member, Greater Kailash I, E Block, who maintains arguably one of the best parks of the city, howeversaid, it will be a tough job.